1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to rail transport vehicles and more particularly to an improved railway vehicle for transporting semitruck trailers at a high level of efficiency.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Although trailer units are commonly transported by rail on flatcars, such transport method is unduly expensive and energy consuming in that the flatcar is frequently considerably larger and heavier than is required to do the job and when empty must frequently be pulled to another pickup site. Various solutions to the problem of transporting semitruck trailers by railway have been suggested before. However, such solutions have suffered from the disadvantages of requiring that special loading and/or unloading facilities must be provided (see for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,576,167 and 2,933,052), or have required that the transported trailer unit be modified (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,762,337 and 3,610,169). These solutions require specialized equipment thereby ruling out general usage of the various devices.
More particularly, the problem with the former solution is that transfer units can only be loaded and unloaded at a particular location; the problem with the latter solution is that the trucker must bear the additional expense of having his highway unit modified to conform to the requirements of the railway units.